Friday, September 19, 2014

Tribune attempts to ignore Dan Flynn letter

The co-chair of a legislative committee that investigated University of Texas regent Wallace Hall failed to disclose conflict of interest in his conduct of the investigation: he had written one of the clout letters at issue in the controversy.

When Hall began asking questions about legislators pulling strings to get their unqualified friends and family members into UT, Speaker Joe Straus responded by assigning Reps. Dan Flynn and Carol Alvarado to lead a committee in finding grounds to impeach Hall.

Flynn, however, is one of the lawmakers who tried to pull strings for a family friend, and never disclosed that fact throughout his yearlong investigation, even as the question of legislative influence became the subject of two official investigations and independent media investigations, and ultimately led to the forced resignation of the university’s president, Bill Powers.

It gets better:

The Tribune didn’t bother to mention Flynn’s letter in its own report.